Personality concepts and theories

Personality

Psychological Perspectives in Psychology: individual and social environment influences

In the field of psychology, the study of personality is essential, allowing the psychologist to understand the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the individual. Understanding personality is significant to psychological studies because it is through this aspect that one determines the kind of individual the person is, what are the likely actions and behavior that s/he will adapt to when confronted in a particular situation or reality. However, the psychology of personality is not unidimensional: personality can be explained in psychology through various facets or perspectives. These perspectives offer different explanations about the nature and dynamic of personality, yet, each perspective provides insightful and additional information, increasing knowledge of humanity about individual personalities.

These perspectives are divided into four main traditions in psychology: the psychoanalytic, behaviorist, humanistic, and cognitive perspectives to understanding personality. In the psychoanalytic perspective, personality is primarily determined biologically, wherein "drives of sex and aggression and ... experiences that occur during the first five years of life" take precedence in shaping and developing the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the individual (Atkinson et. al., 2000:482). Freud, the primary proponent who introduced psychoanalytical theory in psychology, further explains his theory of personality development to include how the psychosexual stages an individual goes through (i.e., oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages) in life are influential in showing how individuals create their individual characteristics.

Apart from the psychoanalytic perspective, the behaviorist approach looks into the role that the social environment has in influencing the development of one's personality. These "environmental conditions" include other people apart from the individual's family, realities and experiences encountered in one's social environment, as well as the individual's responses to his/her physical environment. The behaviorist perspective is closely linked with the cognitive approach, which looks at the biological operations of the human mind, positing that the way humans "mentally represent information" leads to the formation of 'constructs' that shape personality among individuals (474). Lastly, the humanistic perspective, centers on the capacity of the individual himself/herself to make decisions and create his/her own personality. This perspective, although it takes into account the influence of the social environment, mainly acknowledges the individual's personal choice to discover and eventually realize his/her 'true self,' the kind of person s/he wants to become.